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Tackling Urban Heat Risk

Mitigating heat islands effects for healthier communities

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The Problem

In July 2022, a temperature of 40°c was recorded in the UK for the first time during that summer’s intense heatwave. And while this might have been a record, it was no outlier: the five hottest days on record have all occurred in the last five years, with climate change expected to make such hitherto freakish weather events commonplace.

But while so much of the property sector’s focus is on energy efficiency or reducing fuel poverty during cold winters, relatively little attention has been given to the impact of extreme heat on our ageing housing stock.

There’s probably two or three weeks of the year when this becomes front and centre of everyone’s attention, and generally the photo that you see in the papers when the temperatures go above 30 degrees is a load of people on the beach, eating ice creams. But the evidence is that the heat wave events are going to increase in the future, and this is going to become a real issue for the health of housing portfolios because they’re just not designed for increasing temperatures in the UK.

J Smith, Director

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